Welcome to CosmicPerl

CosmicPerl.com is being re-launched as an open source organisation, supporting the new perl web framework called CosmicFramework with it's associated libraries and applications.

CosmicFramework is an ambitious project which aims to provide a lightweight, but robust, flexible and easily distributable web framework for Perl.

The quality factors that this project aims to appease are:-

Portability

It must work on a variety of platforms Linux/Windows/BSD as well as web servers Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, Nginx, Perl.

Deployability

It must be very easy to deploy on any of the platforms, including environments where the user has restricted access. Such as no access to a compiler, or no shell access.

Scalability

It must enable easy horizontol scaling across multiple servers.

Efficiency under plain CGI

It must still run well under old vanilla CGI.

Efficiency when persistent

mod_perl locks you into apache, which breaks the portability rule, although it wouldn't hurt to have it as an option. FastCGI offers a solution that works with a number of web servers.

Flexibility in supporting DB

The framework shouldn't lock you into a particular DB. I want to go much further than this. I don't think you should have to code for specific DBs. I don't think the SQL should be abstracted to far away. I think the main 4 web DBs are Oracle, MySQL, Postgres and MS SQL Server. I think schema evolution should be easier and the upgrade code you have to write should be minimal.

Security

The framework should be inheritly secure, and promote secure ways of doing things. Flexible server and client side validation should be easy to implement.

I18N

It should be designed from the outset to allow easy L10N.

HTML separation

No code in the template, no code in the template, no code in the template.

Benchmarking and testing

The framework should make this easy. Debugging should be a dream.

Supporting tools

Developing with the framework should be childs play, with tools to automate as much as possible.

Mini learning curve

The learning curve should be small. Complexities should be extracted away from the user. The framework should make simple things simple, and hard things... a little bit less simple. Perl newbies should be able to use the framework even with their limited knowledge and dirty code. They shouldn't be forced to learn advanced and complicated modules/patterns/syntax/structures just to use the framework.

Extensibility

It should be easy to extend the framework, through direct interaction with the code, such as new Perl modules. Or though a API opening the door to plugins coded in a variety of languages.

The project is completely open source, the current plan is to have all modules hosted on GitHub.

Those looking for CosmicPerl.com's old scripts, you can find the old free affiliate software AffiliateClick in our archives (not yet ported to use the CosmicFramework). If you want a commercial affiliate software package, please visit our sponsor AllAffiliatePro.com.